


Comic-Con and the Unusual Sciences

by thatsrightdollface



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Comic-Con, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Star Wars - Freeform, and more specifically Jacen Solo, occasional references to, star wars legends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 18:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17924318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Remy and Max go to Comic-Con!  They have a pretty fun time, at first.





	Comic-Con and the Unusual Sciences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CytosineSkald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CytosineSkald/gifts).



> Hi!!! Thank you for reading. :) I hope you enjoy this~ It's a gift for my friend Meredith (CytosineSkald!!!!), really, which is why it's got Jacen Solo in it. Or... Y'know. References to Jacen Solo. A Jacen Solo costume. :P I don't think explicit knowledge of Jacen Solo is really necessary to read this, but it was always in the plan 'cause I was trying to combine things she likes. Hi Meredith!!! You're wonderful!!! 
> 
> Also, some notes:  
> \- Some characters are interpreted differently in this AU, for fun. Hopefully it works for what it is???  
> \- This is meant to be in relatively modern times... Max and Remy are the same age-ish, here. Wonky timeline stuff. 
> 
> I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made!!! Please, have a wonderful day~

  1. Roommates



Until Max Eisenhardt, Remy had never had a roommate at Charles Xavier’s University for the Unusual Sciences.  He’d had his same high-up room all to himself for a couple years now…  Perched over the dripping, thoughtful willows by Jean Grey Lake.  Apparently, the university’s founder had named that lake after one of his first students, back when the Unusual Sciences were a bit too frowned upon to be given whole, actual universities.  Jean Grey had mastered the science of life and death so completely that some people called her a necromancer.  Others called her the Phoenix, because she’d summoned their loved ones back from unforgiving dirt.

That name took on a far more sinister meaning, soon enough, though, after some anti-death science zealots set her house on fire one night.  Jean couldn’t quite raise _herself_ from the dark, it turned out.  Hence the lake, now – hence the willows, and the shimmering plaque planted stubbornly among the water weeds.  Ah, well.  Remy liked watching the willows shiver in the wind.  He was here to study energy, to learn how humanity could harness it from anything, anything.  He’d always had a knack for that sort of thing, even when he didn’t exactly mean to.

There were reasons Remy LeBeau hadn’t had a roommate before now – exploding reasons, and damaged school property reasons, and the sort of reasons that left Remy’s fingertips crackling with an uncanny electricity so much of the time – but the university hadn’t really known where else to shuffle Max.  He was an exchange student from Germany somewhere, and he’d transferred in unexpectedly.  Last minute.  An emergency sort of thing, from what Remy could understand.  He hadn’t minded shuffling his stuff around, knowing all that.  He’d grown up with a big family, anyway, in the deep of the bayou.  Muddy water and fireflies, something spicy probably cooking over the stove…  It had been _weird_ , having things so quiet.  Left to his work, and poor dead Jean Grey’s willows, and whatever fandom memorabilia he’d remembered to bring when he headed up to New York after break.

People said the Unusual Sciences were practiced skills, sure…  And that _was_ part of it…   But there was always a little something more, too.  Something ground in deep and dangerous and personal.  Hell, maybe if things had been different – if he’d had better control? – Remy would’ve been studying animation or literature or going to culinary school right now.  That was why he didn’t ask what Max’s major was, when he first moved in.  He probably wasn’t ever gonna ask about it, actually, though he _did_ ask which Hogwarts House Max would’ve been in soon enough, and what color he would’ve wanted his lightsaber to be if they’d been born force sensitive instead of destined for the Unusual Sciences.

Max had come wandering in, back then, looking far away and closed-off as a door on the other side of the world.  His hair was dark and wavy, ruffled after a long plane ride.  He’d been wearing an actual sweater, too, shoved up to his elbows in the heat.  Remy’d greeted him enthusiastically enough.  “ _That’s my stuff, don’t mess with it too much – those are old dead Jean Grey’s trees, they’re kinda nice – there’s this one washing machine down in the school laundry that will start up for free if you jiggle it just right…_ ”  You know.  That sort of thing.  Remy talked a lot with his hands.  He’d been told he had an easy smile, the sort that was about as good as a wink.

Max had flopped all his stuff down on his bed, glancing tiredly around at the bare walls on his side of the room.  He looked like the sort of person who had seen too much of a lot of nasty things, which he probably _was_ …   But Remy didn’t ask about that just the same as he didn’t ask what the guy was studying.  He had _some_ manners, after all.  Max had said, “Would you mind speaking a little slower?” in stiff but very good English.  He’d smiled apologetically, then.  Tiredly, tossed over his shoulder like salt to ward off bad luck.   He’d asked where Remy’s accent came from, and when Remy said “Louisiana.  Cajun, homme,” Max nodded and said that he’d thought for sure the song drifting over from the computer was in _some sort_ of French.

Then came the questions about Hogwarts Houses.  The important stuff, you know.  Max said later that at first he’d thought he was thrown into Remy’s dorm because Remy LeBeau could make friends with anybody…  But that was before they got into as many fights as they ended up getting into, yes?

Before they got wrapped up in week-long prank wars with Remy’s girlfriend, Anna Marie, and her wily gymnast of a brother – before the Unusual Science Fair, where Max ended up coming for first prize and pissing off the Hellfire Study Club.

And, y’know.  Before Comic-Con, too.

 

  1. We Gotta Have Costumes



By the time Remy told Max they were going to Comic-Con at the end of the semester, he’d already known Max’s field of Unusual Science study for quite some time.  He figured it out pretty damn soon after stepping on a loose tack that got wedged too far up into the soft between his toes, actually.  They’d been helping Anna Marie get her dorm room set up, around then, and that nimble brother of hers had been pinning posters up on the ceiling…  Stringing the pale purple fairy lights Anna Marie’d picked out – (lights that reminded Remy strangely of the crackling energy in his own eyes…  A scientific, perfectly rational thing, of course) – and stuff like that, all while dangling precariously with his tail looped around the light fixture.

Yeah, some of the Unusual Sciences students had tails, or clattering hooves, or Kurt’s mouth full of too-sharp grinning fangs.  It was common enough on campus that Remy had stopped wearing tinted glasses to hide his eyes, and he told people he almost never thought about them anymore.

At any rate, Kurt had probably dropped a couple tacks, and Anna Marie got some fresh new one-hundred percent organic red paint on her carpet that day.  Also, Max held his hand over the tack and drew it out into his hand, easy as he breathed, easy as he made fun of Remy’s music taste on a semi-regular basis.  But it wasn’t telekinesis here, or anything like that.  It was magnetism, so that Max felt the pull of the earth’s magnetic field all the time, like a thought just on the tip of his tongue…  And so that Max turned out to be the reason the protestors outside the school gates on sports-festival days kept complaining about their cars spontaneously breaking down…  And/or their staplers and art supplies turning against them when they tried to make protest signs.  If the school board knew Max was up to anything, they hadn’t stopped him yet.

Max had washed his hands pretty thoroughly after touching that bloody tack, calm and straight-backed, not meeting anybody’s eyes, and Anna Marie had dragged a sparkly rug over the carpet stain.  Kurt had flipped down onto the bed, wincing and apologizing, running a hand through his hair like he forgot he’d tried to style it like a young Errol Flynn that day. Nobody asked about what had dragged this particular breed of Unusual Science into the world…  Or, you know, into the university’s curriculum, anyway.  Max would be taking generalized courses, sure, but also ushered off for some one-on-one time with fancy-pants members of the school board.  To learn his craft…  To master his science, just like the university’s founder had planned.  Just like Remy did, three times a week; just like Kurt and Anna Marie, and everybody else slipped into the program.  Those hours would go down in his transcript as “Independent Study.”  It wasn’t really Remy’s business what went on, there.

The Phoenix had learned to see into minds, people said, and bend the spark of life like lighting a match, keeping a candle cupped safe in her palm.  Max, apparently, learned how to make nasty people’s staplers come at them like _The Monster Book of Monsters_ in Harry Potter three.  What can you do?

When Remy informed Max they were going to Comic-Con, they were all in Anna Marie’s dorm room again, this time for a movie night/intervention.  Things had been going strange with Anna Marie’s roommate, Kitty, and her boyfriend…  This huge, pensive painter guy from Russia.  Remy didn’t know him very well.  Still, the relationship confusion meant Anna Marie had ordered a couple pizzas and instructed all her “Most Favorite and _Very Distracting_ , Got It, Y’all?” people to gather up and watch some sort of movie with dragons in it.  Kitty liked dragons.  In fact, she claimed she’d used to have a tiny, slippery one as a pet…  And while Remy couldn’t exactly prove that for a god-honored fact, he _had_ seen stranger things.

So…  So, they’d found a copy of the movie with German subtitles, to make the whole thing a little easier on Max – that was Anna Marie for you.  She was curled up with her head in Remy’s lap, about then, and his fingers moving gently through her hair.  She was snorting laughter into her palms whenever Kitty laughed, and throwing playful commentary over her shoulder every now and again.  Her Unusual Sciences course was a strange one, and this time last year it would’ve meant she was shoving Remy’s hands away whenever they got too close to her cheek, or maybe her scalp.  She was a little more stable, now…  Maybe ‘cause she’d logged more Independent Study hours than pretty much anyone.  She and Kurt had thick, drawling accents – different than Remy’s, but still hard on Max when they got excited enough or started to throw around weird sayings their moms had taught them.

Illyana from Kitty’s ballet class had painted both Kurt and Kitty’s nails by the time that movie was over…  (Kitty wrestled Kurt’s image inducer away before she did it, too, so she could paint his naturally crooked claws instead of whatever sort of perfectly manicured hands he was wishing he really had that day.)  Max had nearly fallen asleep a couple times – which made sense, honestly, since the guy was up late studying so much of the time, either with a little reading light or literally under his blankets like Remy was some sort of parent stomping around and confiscating his comic books.  But _also_ , by that point, Remy had pulled up the Comic-Con website on his phone and explained all the most important events and panels he and Max were definitely going to a couple weekends from then.

“There isn’t a way out of this, is there?” Max had asked, rubbing at one of his eyes, propping himself up on Anna Marie’s floor.

“Do you _want_ out?” Remy had challenged.  He’d waggled his phone a little closer to Max’s face.  Something about a metalworking/set design workshop seemed to catch Max’s eye for a second...  And then something about a meet-and-greet with the guy who wrote that long and kinda depressing series about a tyrant who could’ve been a just king, but whose heart and blood turned to stone thanks to a taunting curse.  Max had liked those books _way_ more than Remy’d expected, really.

“I’ll go if it _you_ want to,” Max had conceded.  His smile was almost as impish as one of Kurt’s, and his hair was ruffled from falling asleep smooshed against Anna Marie’s mom’s old beanbag chair.  “I can only imagine how much you’ll pout, if I say no.”

“I won’t pout,” Remy had said, then, tilting his phone down so Anna Marie could scroll through the events herself.  “I _never_ pout.”

Kurt, who wasn’t even involved in the conversation, _thank you_ , barked a laugh at that.  He was sitting very still while Illyana stuck little rhinestones to some of his claws.  If Remy didn’t know any better he’d say Anna Marie’s brother just liked the attention.

“We’ll need costumes, obviously,” Remy told Max.  “If you think I’m bringing you along without you dressing up…  Ha!”

“Ha?” Max groaned.  “Costumes?  From, like…  Star Wars, or something?”

Remy felt the grin slide over his face, oil-slick and scheming.  Enough to make Max snicker and shake his head, scooting to sit up a little more completely.  Scooting over until he was sitting on Anna Marie’s beanbag chair, actually, looking like the most serious person who had ever sat on a beanbag in the history of time.

“Star Wars, huh?” Remy said.  “Sure, we can make that happen.”

 

  1. Oh, No.



Remy and Max cycled through a few costume ideas before finally settling on what they were currently wearing, milling around the artists’ booths at Comic-Con.  At first, Remy’d wanted to go for a classic “Han Solo and Chewbacca” kind of thing, but Max hated the rubber Chewie mask so much he threatened to make it vanish mysteriously in the night.  Then, Remy had thought he’d sold Max on the idea of being Lando Calrissian, mostly thanks to his interesting half-capes.  (Max would never admit it – and a person might not guess ‘cause of all those damn sweaters and sweater vests and other sweater-like accessories he’d stuffed their joint closet with – but Max was definitely the sort of guy who liked having dramatic clothing and an air like he knew what he was about.  Remy’d figured that out the one time they’d rented tuxes because Emma Frost from the Hellfire Study Club threatened to mock them mercilessly, otherwise.  And/or beat them up.  Long story.)

Other costume ideas for Max had included C-3PO – he could be appropriately prickly, and the idea of him exclaiming _“I say!”_ and correcting intergalactic badasses’s grammar made a certain ridiculous sense – Luke Skywalker, and, of course, Jar Jar Binks.  Kurt re-suggested Jar Jar Binks every time he stumbled into the conversation, actually, enough times that Max had reprogrammed his image inducer to a new, horrifying Jar Jar Binks Setting to either play along or send a message.  Remy couldn’t quite tell which, but if one thing could be said about Anna Marie’s brother it was that he knew how to roll with a joke.

Max scrapped those ideas and made his own costume, though.  Of all the things he could’ve picked it was pretty dang obscure, nowadays, and it made walking around with Remy as Han Solo seem like some weird time travel shit was happening, but there was something steady and painful in the way he’d made up his mind.  Also, his costume involved a very earnest-looking rubber lizard, and that was kind of hilarious.  Anna Marie took a lot of pictures before they left, and teased Remy for the way he had so many Star Wars extended universe books arranged neatly on a shelf but routinely kicked his textbooks under the bed.

“I told you you could read whatever books of mine you wanted, homme, but I didn’t think you’d really done it!” Remy’d laughed, when he figured out who Max had dressed up as.  “Also…  You _didn’t_ go with Jar Jar Binks?”

“You’re funny,” Max had said, in a voice that meant he didn’t think Remy was very funny at all.  He smoothed some of his Jacen Solo wig out of his eyes.  “Also, I think your vest is on inside-out, or is that part of the ‘Hello Everyone, I’m a Dashing Rogue’ thing?”

They only talked a little about why Max had chosen Jacen out of everybody, _everybody_ in the Star Wars universe, and that was on the train into the city proper.  That train was crowded with so many people in different complicated costumes – superheroes with catsuits, elf queens with fake flowers tangled in their hair, aliens with glinting yellow contacts that made their eyes look sort of like Kurt’s would normally, on a day his image inducer was, _I don’t know_ , cursed to project Jar Jar Binks eternally until he got it fixed.  Max just said something about how Jacen felt really tragic and real…  Something about Jacen reminded him of what he’d felt like back home, maybe, before he got an invitation to come to Professor Xavier’s University for the Unusual Sciences.  _That_ shut Remy up right quick.  Nodding.  Recalling some of Jacen Solo’s Finest Moments from the books.  Playfully trying to swipe Max’s prop lizard.

He’d seen just a couple of Max’s scars, but that was enough.

And now here they were, wandering around the booths between panels.  Remy’d picked up a couple souvenirs for Anna Marie, including a print of someone’s superhero design he thought she’d get a kick out of – a lady called “Rogue,” which felt sort of ironic considering _everybody’s near-constant teasing_ about Remy’s own roguish dreams.  She looked strangely like Anna Marie though, and the indie comic Remy’d flipped through had scenes of her princess-carrying one of the guys on her team, so…  Yeah, he’d be lying if he said she wasn’t his type, and Anna Marie would probably know it.  Shove him in the arm lightly…  Tenderly, almost.  Call him a rascal.  You know.

Max hadn’t bought anything, really, except snacks for both of them.  He’d grabbed all the metalworking flyers he could, though, and was lugging around all the books from the Sad King Has a Sad Stone Heart series in hopes he could get as many of them signed as possible.  Not everybody had recognized Max’s costume, but some people who did got kinda excited.  A girl dressed as Jaina Solo got him to take a bunch of pictures with her, actually, and after he finished blushing bright red and shooting Remy “Why Did You Let Me Agree to This?!” glares, Max honestly seemed to get kinda into it.

Anna Marie had instructed Remy to Make Sure to Get Lots of Pictures, himself, which so far had included a series of text-message selfies where Han and Jacen Solo seemed to be interacting across time and space.  At first Remy’s Han looked baffled by his mysterious time traveling son.  Glaring at him skeptically, and all, so that Remy couldn’t exactly watch the screen while he took the pictures and got a lot of dud shots, featuring such participants as the ceiling and blurry crowds and, one time, a smudge on his shirt he hadn’t even realized was there.  Once he got the pictures angled just right he’d sent commentary like, _“This is probably an imposter, right?”_ and _“My goddamn son wouldn’t grow up to raise rubber lizards, I tell you what.”_   By the time their con visit took a turn for the, well…  Unfortunate? … Han and Time Traveling Jacen were making peace, though.  Anna Marie texted back stuff like, _“You know I don’t know what exactly a ‘Jagged Fel’ is, don’t you?”_ and _“Nooo, Han!  Pikachu isn’t a Wookie with a weird haircut!  I hope you didn’t actually say that to the guy!!!”_

But then…  Of course…  Max had gone into the restroom by himself, leaving Remy with a sack full of Sad King novels and his phone – to keep up the Time Traveling Jacen commentary, of course.  In retrospect, maybe Remy should’ve expected something might happen, when a handful of guys shoved past him and into the bathroom, too.  One of them growled something about Remy’s eyes, after all.  Something about how it sucked this con had to be so close to the University for Unusual Sciences.  Something about born-freaks, and how some “science” wasn’t rightly science at all.

Remy bit his tongue, though.  Remy usually bit his tongue.  He even kind of smiled at the guy – stubborn and with his eyes all full of crackling, spilling-over energy.  It was a challenge, but it wasn’t the sort of challenge that would get them out of Comic-Con real fast, or anything.

But then, Remy hadn’t really done much about the protestors outside the university gates, had he?  Max, though.  Max _had_.

Remy should’ve ambled into the bathroom _before_ he heard the series of yelps and splintering crashes, but…  Live and learn, or something.

When Remy did shove his way into the bathroom, dragging Max’s stash of Sad King novels with him, he closed the door behind him _quick_.   Max was catching his breath, backed up against the wall by a picture of some superperson Remy’d never heard of, instructing everybody to wash their hands _or die_.  It was somebody with a garish red and purple cape thing going.  (Remy was more of a sci-fi TV show guy than a superhero comics guy, truth be told.  He couldn’t have told you who Mr. Wash Your Hands was.)

The first thing Remy noticed, besides the objective fact that the bathroom was in shambles – and this would sound goofy no matter how he told it to Anna Marie later – was that Max was bleeding all over his Jacen Solo costume.  His lip was split open and still dripping blood.  His wrist was twisted at a weird angle, and he was pressing it into his chest like enough pressure might jerk it back the right way.

“ _They started it_ ,” Max hissed.  His eyes were huge and more furious than Remy had ever imagined them.  “They grabbed my school ID, and they started it.”

Then, Remy _really focused_ on the guys crumpled on the ground and collapsed trying to crawl into bathroom stalls – then, he focused on the cracked-apart sinks, and the pipes twisted free from the walls.  One of those pipes was wrapped around a guy’s ankle, so tight there was a purplish bruise spreading out from where it’d grabbed on.  One shattered porcelain sink was bloody from where it had cracked somebody’s head, and water was leaking everywhere.  The pipes looked like jagged vines, primal and everywhere and bleeding just the same as Max was.

“Check their pulses?” Max asked.  He seemed frozen.  He seemed more afraid of what he might’ve done than anything some random Comic-Con assholes could’ve done to him.  And so Remy checked their pulses, stepping over bloody porcelain and tangled pipes.  He sealed the door shut with sharp, doorframe-melting handfuls of energy as well as he could – there were already voices gathering outside, you know, and it wasn’t as though Remy’s cousins deep in the bayou hadn’t taught him a couple tricks.  And then he checked the pulses quickly…  Maybe a little sloppily.  He _may’ve_ stepped on somebody’s hand trying to get to their wrist, for instance.  But as soon as they were both convinced everyone was still alive, Remy flung some paper towels at Max and tossed his Jacen Solo cloak thing over his bent arm.  He dragged Max Eisenhardt out the bathroom window, and was on the phone with his Independent Study advisor before their feet hit the pavement.

So, that was Comic-Con.  Pretty great, until…  You know.

Their _real life_ outside the university caught up.

 

  1. What Now?



It’s not like Max and Remy didn’t get in some nasty sort of trouble for all that, mind you – and it’s not like the Charles Xavier University for the Unusual Sciences didn’t shell out of a ton of money to get the Comic-Con Bathroom Jerks really excellent medical treatment.  Better than they could afford for any of their employees, actually, Remy’s Independent Study coordinator quipped, nudging him in the arm and probably trying to cheer him up.  But _also_ – this sort of thing had happened before, and they both knew it…  To more horrific degrees, now and then.  There were a lot of memorials around campus, after all.  The pensive sway of old dead Jean Grey’s willow trees outside Remy and Max’s window was a near-constant reminder of that…  And Kurt hadn’t set foot off campus without his image inducer in over two years.

For all Remy knew, Max could’ve ended up with a memorial of his own, if that incident with the pipes and the guys twisting his arm and trying to knock his teeth out had gone a little differently.  He felt almost like he saw Max Eisenhardt memorials out of the corner of his eyes, sometimes, walking to class, now.  Someday, they’d both leave the isolated world of the university and whatever protective legacy Charles Xavier had managed to leave behind.  The future was coming for everyone all the time, and if Remy didn’t stop accidentally sparking his books to a flame in his hands when he got distracted…

If whatever was ruinous and hurting inside Max was set loose again, his righteous fury prodded into something strange…

Well, you know.

Remy talked about it a little bit with Anna Marie, and she hung the print he’d gotten her of the superhero girl, “Rogue,” up on her wall.  Said they’d just have to be strong, then, wouldn’t they?  Said they’d just have to do some good with the “science” life had given them.  She said all that like she’d recited similar things in her head, now and then…  Or like one of her moms had held her close and whispered words like those ones into her hair, still being so, so careful not to accidentally brush against her bare skin.

“And hey,” Anna Marie said, posing all dramatic and playfully, like the superhero picture on her wall.  She glanced behind her just a little to make sure she got the arm angle right. “Max is already planning for next year’s Comic-Con.  He says this time you’re both gonna be characters from that sad king book thing he likes so much.  He says the last thing he wants to do is let anybody think he’s afraid.”

“Oh, shit,” Remy said.  “I guess I’ll…  Probably have to actually read those books, now.”

“Yeah,” Anna Marie smiled, dropping her arms back to her sides…  Folding them around herself, a little.  “Probably.”

Remy found Max in their dorm room soon after that, sitting up close to the window, reading.  He was wearing a nondescript, Previously Worn by a Grandpa and Picked Up at Goodwill sweater again, and the swelling all along his lip had gone down some.  He smiled when Remy came in, even though it probably hurt a little.

They would work on their homework on separate sides of the room, for a while, and then probably head out to get dinner.  After that…  Well.

Kurt _did_ have a new board game he’d been trying to gather up people to play.


End file.
